In focus: Mine Awareness and Mine Action

LandNavalNews

04 April 2011

April 4 is the International Mine Awareness Day, established by the United Nations to increase mine awareness and mine action. Saab offers products and systems that find mines and render them harmless.

According to the Red Cross, there were between 45-100 million landmines around the globe in 2008. No one really knows how many landmines are hidden in the ground, hindering a country’s development and continuing to cause medical, social and economic issues even many years after the end of an armed conflict. The UN Mine Awareness Day, established in 2005, is focused on land-mines, but one shouldn’t forget that there are explosives placed also in our seas, causing a serious threat to ships and submarines.

Saab has a variety of products and systems for mine countermeasures, on the ground and at sea.

Mine disposal from a safe distance

SM-EOD is a system for selective and contact free disposal of mines, unexploded ordnance (UXO) and improvised explosive devices (IED) which are either covered with soil, underwater or on surface. Using SM-EOD is the easiest and safest way to disrupt such objects from a safe distance. The system is approved by NATO and the UN and is being used world-wide in more than 50 countries.

For the security on and under water, Saab offers a range of active countermeasures for the detection, neutralisation and destruction of mines. There’s the Smart MCM toolbox for Naval Mine Countermeasures, designed to solve all naval mine-warfare mission types. It consists of a core software platform plus a number of functional modules, that can be put together to handle the situation at hand. Saab also offers highly effective underwater vehicles, developed to conduct mine-reconnaissance and mine disposal missions or run ahead of a vessel and relaying information about any mines or explosives under water to the operator onboard.

Apart from destructive landmines, there are IED’s, Improvised Explosives Devices, out there. Unlike mines, which are triggered by pressure or magnetic influence, IED’s are not necessarily activated by physical contact or pressure but can be controlled remotely by wire, electronic signals or cellular phone. Saab has worked close to the British Army to quickly develop an IED-specific training solution that trains both individuals and groups to deal with IED threats. It records every action and motion of up to 90 soldiers and vehicles over a three kilometer radius.

Carabas provide high accuracy maps of buildings, infrastructure, forest density, forest terrain topography and targets deployed under foliage or camouflage and buried objects. The system can be used for a wide range of missions, in rescue services, policing, forest industry and detection of target deployments scattered over wide areas, The capacity of Carabas has now been extended to small targets (humans, IED’s, mines, etc.) and subsurface imaging capability for detection of concealed targets. The installation is miniaturized to fit on tactical UAV’s, light aircraft and helicopters and flight tests are planned for May this year.

Related news & stories

Defence and security company Saab has signed a contract with RIOgaleão, the concessionaire responsible for managing the Tom Jobim International Airport in Rio de Janeiro, to supply a common-use surface surveillance platform.